Category Archives: Healthcare Innovations

Diabetes prevalence is rapidly increasing in the world. The number of people with diabetes has risen from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. Considering the size of the problem, you must all have seen or maybe used a glucose monitor. So, how does it work?

Blood glucose level is kept in check in the body by a hormone called insulin, produced by the pancreas. Unstable insulin levels in blood may cause excess glucose to be converted to fat and be deposited on your blood vessels as plaque. This may cause various complications such as cardio-vascular disease, nerve damage, kidney damage, eye damage among a lot of other complications.

Watson is an IBM supercomputer named after Thomas J. Watson who led IBM into the computer era. It represents a fundamental shift in the paradigm of computing – moving from programmable systems which have been the mainstay for the last several decades to learning systems that keep getting smarter as they process more knowledge. IBM has a business unit dedicated to transforming healthcare into a quantifiable service where every bit of information is available. It is called Watson Health and offers services in Genomics, Drug Discovery, Oncology, Imaging etc. By using it, physicians only have to go through their personalized reports instead of reading through dozens of papers for every patient’s case.

What is Proton therapy and why should you care?

Conventional Radiation therapy techniques use X-rays (‘photons’) to treat cancer by focussing X-rays on cancer regions. Proton therapy is a technique to treat cancer by the use of ‘protons’. The usage of protons to treat cancer may be advantages in various ways.

Radiation therapy for cancer treatment causes unnecessary exposure to healthy cells also, posing health risks on the patient. We can use Proton therapy for the following reasons.

We may want to expose children and pregnant women to lower amount of radiation.

Respiratory health is deteriorating day by day globally due to an increased exposure to certain risk factors such as pollution, smoking and passive lifestyle. Although in general the respiratory diseases can be kept under control, there is still a need for better phenotyping and management of lung diseases such as COPD and Asthma. The conventional Lung Function Tests like spirometry don’t provide any regional information and have limited sensitivity to detect changes in pulmonary function in an early stage because the healthy areas in the lung compensate for a progressive disease making it undetectable. There is a need to shift to a better technology which can look at the overall lung health.

Many of us are terrified of blood tests, where skin is pricked with a needle to get the blood for testing. A solution to this problem has come in the form of ToucHb—a prick-free blood testing device

The inside of ToucHb

Say hello to ToucHb—a prick-free blood testing device brought to you by Biosense Technologies. ToucHb can measure your blood hae-moglobin, oxygen saturation, temperature and pulse rate all without pricking for blood. A team of three—engineer Myshkin Ingawale and doctors Abhishek Sen and Yogesh Patil—was behind making this product from the ground up.

A handheld optical scanner to detect skin cancer, “bladeless” cataract surgery, and an amazing new headache treatment are among the Top 10 Medical Innovations for 2013 selected by a panel of Cleveland Clinic scientists and researchers.

A surprising government program also made the list, unveiled at the clinic’s Medical Innovation Summit. To qualify, a breakthrough had to offer a major improvement in patient care, have a high probability of success, and must either be on the market now or be close to being introduced.

Here’s a look at the remarkable therapies and game-changing technologies expected to dramatically reshape healthcare—and save lives—over the next year: